Must read: Ken Timmerman on Obama’s unreported campaign donations

posted at 1:15 pm on October 1, 2008 by Allahpundit

Via Andy McCarthy, who sets an example I’ll follow by keeping his own commentary short to get you to read the whole thing. To be clear: Obama’s not required by law to identify contributions of less than $200. But given that (a) McCain does it voluntarily, (b) The One claims to be all about a new, transparent politics in Washington, and (c) his campaign is famously powered by small donors, it’s a tad curious that most of the names of people who’ve dropped a little north of $222 million on him in small contributions remain known only to him and his campaign.

Especially when some of the ones who have been identified look like this:

In a letter dated June 25, 2008, the FEC asked the Obama campaign to verify a series of $25 donations from a contributor identified as “Will, Good” from Austin, Texas.

Mr. Good Will listed his employer as “Loving” and his profession as “You.”

A Newsmax analysis of the 1.4 million individual contributions in the latest master file for the Obama campaign discovered 1,000 separate entries for Mr. Good Will, most of them for $25.

In total, Mr. Good Will gave $17,375.

Following this and subsequent FEC requests, campaign records show that 330 contributions from Mr. Good Will were credited back to a credit card. But the most recent report, filed on Sept. 20, showed a net cumulative balance of $8,950 — still well over the $4,600 limit.

The fact that the campaign itself is reporting a cumulative balance in excess of the legal limit means they know, or should know, that they’ve got more money on hand than they’re supposed to have. And like McCarthy says, it’s only because “Good Will” was so stupid as to use the same phony identity for all of his donations that he crossed the $200 reporting threshold in the first place. A smart, determined fraudster would have used multiple identities.

Until recently, the Obama Web site allowed a contributor to select the country where he resided from the entire membership of the United Nations, including such friendly places as North Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Unlike McCain’s or Sen. Hillary Clinton’s online donation pages, the Obama site did not ask for proof of citizenship until just recently. Clinton’s presidential campaign required U.S. citizens living abroad to actually fax a copy of their passport before a donation would be accepted.

With such lax vetting of foreign contributions, the Obama campaign may have indirectly contributed to questionable fundraising by foreigners.

Why would The One be so negligent about his standards knowing that, at the very least, it creates an appearance of impropriety? Because, dummy: He knows big media’s not going to press him on it. And with that, I’ll keep my promise and send you off to dive in.

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Comments

How much does anyone want to bet that Mr. Good Will, Mrs. Good Will and their 14 adult children, parents, grandparents, cousins and brothers and sisters are registered to vote via absentee ballot from their comfortable home in a boarded up gas station?

Speaking of Fred Baron, Elizabeth Edwards has once again reared her pathetic self into the public spotlight by attending a healthcare meeting in which she attacks John McCain and his healthcare plan. I hate to tell her, but she is so totally attacking the wrong John.

Maybe you perhaps. But not me! Call me a racist all day and night. Scream it from the rooftops and brand me with it, but I will not just lay down and die. I grew up in a mixed race family, a little haole (white) from Hawaii, where I was the minority. Oblama and his skin color, and the fact that he and his faithful use that, don’t scare me a bit with the way they use that. But what does scare me is to just throw my hands in the air and say I give up. What scares the daylights out of me is the thoughts of my children having to live in an Obama Marxist/Socialist/Communist craptacular world that is crumbling around them.
I really think it’s those following blindly on the left that are afraid of being branded racists, not those of us on the right.
Why McCain doesn’t seem to have any fight in him is beyond words. The left doesn’t know what our weakness is. But they are so crazy and still so PO’d about Bush “Stealing” the White House that they’ll do anything to get it back. Lie, cheat, and steal. And without a doubt it’s all fair game to them, and the ends justify the means. Been said here a million and one times, make it a million and two now. They have no morals and compunction about it.

Of course it’s widespread fraud. How hard would it be for George Soros to hire a bunch of folks to sit down and make zillions of small donations, just like Good Will? I think there’s a massive attempt to subvert or destroy the electoral process and get Mr. Socipath elected, no matter what.

I think you are missing the point. The person who they are registering is not there. The person who is registering the person who is not there, is there and is voting for them. See? In person, absentee voting.

Why isn’t the McCain campaign hitting this on television ads. It would definitely be worth the money in a couple of major markets. It is simple, well documented and in undeniable evidence that His “Hope ‘n Change” message is just going from Washington to Chicago. Obama’s black shirted special action “truth squads” probably couldn’t do much to stop it and would draw further attention.
“Obama – corruption you can trust”. Show a couple of the egregious examples that he hasn’t corrected then ask the obvious question “what is hidden in the other 220million?”. This ploy will only work if it is done right now.

Credit card donations are pretty easy to track, they leave a paper trail back to the cardholder and the vendor (the Obama campaign) could easily see the original issuing bank (foreign or domestic). If the FEC investigated (lol), any patterns could be determined in days.

I was wondering about that. It seemed odd that Obama would get so much of his contributions from small doners, and speculating if there was fraud involved with that coincidentally being the no-report threshold.
Given how lopsided the rest of the world is on the issue, what is the probability that half of Obama’s war chest is illegal?

I think you are missing the point. The person who they are registering is not there. The person who is registering the person who is not there, is there and is voting for them. See? In person, absentee voting.

bloggless on October 1, 2008 at 2:48 PM

Gee… now I get it… it’s so confusing. I hope they take them to multiple locations to practice so they can get it right.

Well, we’ve had ACORN out there for four years registering Porky Pig, Dick Tracy, and Elvis Presley to vote. I guess the Obama campaign just took it to another level and made them campaign contributors!

That would be a bit Obama centric. Has anyone written a positive book about McCain?

Count to 10 on October 1, 2008 at 3:20 PM

I frequently browse around a local Barnes and Noble. It’s quite illuminating. There are coffee table books about Obama…seriously. An Obama calendar, with a “hope” and “change” theme. There may be ten or fifteen different books on the shelves about Obama, not counting “Obamanation” and another critical book or two.

I think I saw three or so McCain books…his own, maybe a couple of others, maybe one more that looked rather negative.

Tons of “Can’t Wait Until the Chimp is Gone” crap.

This is just an estimate of course, but next time I go, I think I’ll count it up just out of curiousity.

To be fair, Obama’s people have called me twice about the $25 donation I gave to him during the primaries. Mitt Romney never had to call me for my $25 donation to him because the form on his web site had me prove my citizenship right then and there. Which goes to say that things might be a bit of a mess over at O! Camp.

McCain should have a press conference and flatly accuse Obama of cheating. Acorn and now this. Yeah, his 40% of Kool Aid drinkers won’t budge. They think it’s hilariious that Obama’s getting away with this stuff while the MSM is hunting down Palin beauty-pageant tapes.

I’m probably wrong, but I still think the middle 20% considers themselves Americans who didn’t like Obama’s European trip and surely won’t like a lot of foreigners underwriting Obama’s campaign.

So glad to hear the chorus chiming in about this major malfunction in our political campaign process that, AS EVER, Obama is abusing and hiding.

Note well Qadhafi using “may have” as in can’t catch me in court.

And if anyone give credence to Qadhafi’s admission that he hosts Islamic financial bundling from Africa/Arabia for Obama, then note well that they do so because in their Islamic estimation, Obama is a Muslim.

The FEC breakdown of the Obama campaign has identified a staggering $222.7 million as coming from contributions of $200 or less. Only $39.6 million of that amount comes from donors the Obama campaign has identified.

It is the largest pool of unidentified money that has ever flooded into the U.S. election system, before or after the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms of 2002.

My question, who’s bought Obama?… and when does the McCain add come out exposing all this?

“How much does anyone want to bet that Mr. Good Will, Mrs. Good Will and their 14 adult children, parents, grandparents, cousins and brothers and sisters are registered to vote via absentee ballot from their comfortable home in a boarded up gas station?” Damiano
And wouldn’t it be something if we found out that as Prez, BO gave this extended family a 5 bedroom house in a nice Chicago suburb. Meanwhile his half brother in Africa is still living on pennies a day. ‘That’s the way we do it’, sez Barry Whosane Oblamalamading-dong.
4shoes: my guess would be the usual suspects, like George Soros. Let’s follow the money, if we dare.

Rather than clarifying, Obama’s people calling twice since a donation are subtly hoping for more of the same. Don’t think that they actually care to clarify a record. What a joke.
maverick muse on October 1, 2008 at 4:25 PM

If elected,, I wonder how long before he starts wearing a headdress to the oval office.
Didn’t Hillary wear some kind of robe thing on her first day to the Senate??
I remember seeing pictures of her in what looked like Roman robes.

Obama has utterly blitzed McCain with all kinds of personal attacks, demagoguery, and baldfaced bullshit. McCain is getting held down and slammed in the nuts, over and over and over.

McCain says he’s still going to fight according to the Marquis of Queensberry rules. The latest example is when Ifill, who will be enriched by an Obama win, moderates a debate, and McCain says “she’ll do a professional job.” Yeah, it’s in her professional interest to see you lose, pal.

When is McCain going to strike back? At what point does Obama kicking dirt on McCain through surrogates finally make McCain say enough is enough?

Please refrain from sending me money until the SEC starts getting less reviews than the current financial crisis. While the “goodies” have been nice, I can’t afford to be labeled as another sanctimonious community orginizer.

It won’t be long before McCain starts talking about the “religion of peace”, no doubt. I’ve never seen a wimpier candidate in my life. BHO is willing to cheat and lie and burn this country to the ground in order to win and McCain is more worried about condemning people on his own side who say “Barack Hussein Obama” – even as BHO used his own name as ‘proof’ of his foreign policy expertise way back in the primaries. This is sad.

I can’t believe nobody seems interested in that…not even around here. It’s the most outrageous thing I’ve heard. The guy is an extremist, and a very credible source (quite innocently, without realizing how it sounded) said he helped Obama get admitted to Harvard, and he PAID for at least part of it. GAVE Obama money for school.

Agreed. I suspect the race is over. But maybe McCain has been merely holding on through Palin’s debate and enactment of the bail-out.

I don’t consider it a resort to “the culture wars,” I think McCain needs to call Obama what he really is: un-American. Wright, Ayers, Resko, Pritzker, Acorn, Kwame Kilpatrick, the Annenberg Challenge, and others. These shady contributions. Line ‘em all up in 527 ads, while McCain starts describing a nation led by Obama compared to a nation led by McCain. Start talking energy again. Talk about taxes. Start directly but succinctly assigning the subprime blame to Obama and all the guilty Dems–heck, Bill Clinton is pointing the way.

Larry Elder has a column at Townhall.com that concludes with a sentence that says it all:

McCain wants to “put his country first.” The best way is simple: Get aggressive and win the election.

BuckeyeSam on October 2, 2008 at 2:03 AM

Unfortunately McCain is still under the illusion that if you are nice to a liberal, they will be nice back. They however are; ‘Et Tu Brute’, back stabbers. In 26 years in Congress McCain has not learned this. Hmm.